This Week In The Laboratories Of Democracy

In which we discover that democracy is roadkill and Wisconsin won't clean it up.

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin' gets done, and where I told all my friends down in old 'Frisco that Tiny Montgomery said hello.

It was a Liberty (!) lovin' week out there in the docks of boon. Let's start in Utah, where some folks have come up with an interesting argument against marriage equality.

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"A reduction in the opposite-sex marriage rate means an increase in the percentage of women who are unmarried and who, according to all available data, have much higher abortion rates than married women," Scharr argues. "And based on past experience, institutionalizing same-sex marriage poses an enormous risk of reduced opposite-sex marriage rates."

This is what the good fathers of The Society would have referred to as the fallacy of post derp, ergo propter derp.

Moving along to Nevada, where a bill that essentially would prohibit the feds from owning land in that state -- The Bundy Protection Act of 2015 -- went down in flames, but not without a fight.

The buzz at the Nevada Legislature Wednesday was all about the late Tuesday night Assembly floor session when Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, R-Las Vegas, crossed the line of proper decorum -- some felt -- when she told Assemblyman Chris Edwards to "Sit your a-- down," during the floor session. Fiore apologized to the Assembly as a whole moments after telling Edwards that. But Wednesday, she said she will not issue an apology to Edwards, calling him pompous and narcissistic.

Sister Fiore is a real piece of work.How she's not already in the House of Representatives is a cockeyed wonder.

We skip on east now to Kansas, the national biohazard lab for infectious stupidity, where the government so would not like to legalize the weed that grows along the side of every county road that it will take your children hostage if you and your sick self even think about proposing the idea.

Shona Banda had a custody hearing Monday after police went to her home and seized suspected marijuana that she said she used to treat her Crohn's disease. She was stripped of custody, at least temporarily, and may yet face charges. Banda previously lived in Colorado, where marijuana is legal not only for medical use but for recreational use as well.

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Luckily, local law enforcement was ever alert.

Garden City Police Department Captain Randy Ralston said officers searched the home on March 24 after the 11-year-old child said during a school drug and alcohol presentation that his mother and other adults in his home used marijuana. Ralston said officials at the Bernadine Sitts Intermediate Center contacted the Kansas Department for Children and Families and DCF performed a child welfare check and reported its findings to police.

If these people had wanted to live in East Germany, dammit, they'd have built a time machine and lived in East Germany.

Walker's budget would delete $700,000 in funding a year for DNR to pay for disposal of deer carcasses along Wisconsin's roadways. Instead, responsibility for paying to cart off the dead deer would fall to whatever other government agency is in charge of the road. Or they may be left uncollected.

Or they may be re-labeled. "Dinner," is one that comes to mind.

Running south now, through the carrion-clogged roadways of Wisconsin all the way down to Tennessee, where -- heads up, ladies -- the unfortunately named Rep. Sheila Butt is not buying your rape and incest alibis.

Butt opposed the amendment that would have added those exceptions, saying on Tuesday: "This amendment appears political because we understand that in most instances this is not verifiable."

Videotape it, ladies. And get the raper or the incest-er to sign an affadavit to that effect, and, if he's a good Christian, try to understand that he's under a lot of stress these days.

This is not the first time that Butt, who is a motivational speaker in addition to being a state lawmaker, has been criticized widely for her public remarks.

In response to a Jan. 26 open letter from the Council on American-Islamic Relations urging potential Republican presidential candidates to reject Islamophobia and reach out to American Muslim voters, Butt posted on her Facebook account: "It is time for a Council on Christian Relations and an NAAWP in this Country." She later deleted the post and said in response to suggestions that "NAAWP" was a racist abbreviation for the "National Association for the Advancement of White People," that she had been misinterpreted and was offended by the reaction from critics. Butt said she meant "National Association for the Advancement of Western Peoples."

I was under the impression that Western Peoples had advanced pretty far since the days of Athenian democracy but, then again, Sheila Butt got elected in the 21st century, so my mileage certainly varies.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Official Blog Stormchaser Friedman of the Plains brings us the continuing saga of Bob Bates, elderly crimebuster, who needs to get away from it all, poor fella.

Monday's plea did not stop Reserve Deputy Bob Bates from asking for, and getting permission, to go on a month-long vacation to the Bahamas he'd already planned.

He needs a good long rest. Which reminds me. The guy he shot is still dead.